JORDAN, Grant

Accounting for sub governments : explaining the persistence of policy communities - Thousand Oaks : SAGE, November 1997

The article begins by comparing the use of terms such as policy community and sub government by different authors and in different (JS. and UK) political science traditions. Although accepting the major body of work that points to the erosion of sub governments, the authors argue that too much emphasis on the complexity and volatility of policy making masks underlying tendencies to stability and bargaining The need for the resolution of conflict both leads to perennial attempts to reconstruct islands of stability and to attempts to "solve" unique disputes by adopting some of the features that have been traditionally associated with sub governments. The authors identify the key characteristics of stable arrangements and attempt to explain their evolution by identifying the benefits of these arrangements for policy makers